Tim Scott’s novel “Outrageous Fortune” is a science/speculative fiction novel written from the perspective of “Johnny X” a dream architecht who has a very bad day, his house is stolen, he is hounded by an encyclopedia sales women and a biker gang who call themselves “The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse” are after him for reasons unknown. The world Johnny lives is divided not by political boundries but by musical genres (i.e. Classical, Easy Listening, Jazz etc), and the main governing body is the traffic department. While the novel is technically science fiction it reads more like a screwball comedy. 

   The book is fast-paced and it is funny. The action begins immediately and there are no slow spots that some novels suffer from. The author makes decent use of satire and irony to keep the reader entertained and thinking. Overall it is an O.K. book if you like quirky books with some unique ideas you might enjoy it, but if you are looking for a true science fiction novel I would suggest you look elsewhere.

   I am an avid fan of science fiction/fantasy novels and I usually prefer novels written from a first person perspective.  In my opinion, novels written from this point of view are better at keeping the story flowing and cohesive. It also allows the reader to get a greater grasp of the protagonist’s emotions and motivations, the first person perspective is just more intimate. However, with this writing perspective there is the danger of long-winded personal narratives that can be very tedious. That is my greatest criticism of this novel. It reads like a personal philosophy rather than a story. The main character’s stream of conciousness is too hard to follow, its almost like reading someone’s bad dream.